De Anza College Karate Sensei (Japanese for instructor) Peter Rabbitt not only passes his knowledge and experience to students in classes offered on campus, he is also involved in the Karate community by offering resources for practitioners of the way of the empty hand.
Rabitt was part of De Anza Karate even before he started teaching here in 1990.
“I actually started here just like these (students) in 1980, under Ploke Sensei who is the other Karate instructor here.” said Sensei Rabbitt. “I started as a beginner and about 10 1/2 years later I was working here.”
Sensei Rabbitt has seen students he trained for years advance to teaching too. Teacher’s Assistant, Adam Weiner, a black belt, said “I’ve been with Sensei Rabbitt for 10 to 15 years with a 10 year break in between, since 1988 as a student.”
Rabbitt is also the academic advisor for De Anza’s Shotokan Karate Club.
“The purpose of the club is to offer extra curricular activities to all the students in the PE2 class, ’cause in the PE2 Karate class, we’re limited to class times, so you’re limited in what you can cover as far as material.The club offers extra curricular stuff. We do a tournament here at De Anza once a year. We have four other dojo in the Northern California area that are part of our league, that we’re friendly with, that we go to their tournament every year. So the club offers practice sessions for that. It gets the students prepared. We also do inter-club activities and other social events.”
Rabbitt also spoke about Karate in the community.
“Karate is like a big family if it’s done right,” he said. “Everybody helps eachother out, and there’s always a really good atmosphere. Everybody is really friendly.”
On his philosophy about martial arts, Rabbitt said “The martial arts when they are taught correctly, the whole purpose is to avoid conflict, ’cause it’s easy to get in a fight but karate is about the empty hand. Its not about offense; it’s about defending myself if I need to.Nobody wins when there’s a confrontation, so that’s one of the main things I try to impart on the students is that it’s not about fighting. It’s about learning how easy it is to hurt somebody and then avoiding it because of that. We try to enforce the concept of avoidance.”
De Anza students who wish to get involved or learn more should email Rabbitt at [email protected] or visit http://www.daskc.org/